In this post in the Global Post’s “Global Pulse” blog, Janet Fleischman, a senior associate at the Global Health Policy Center of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), reports on the “Saving Mothers, Giving Life” initiative, launched by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday. She describes the project as “an ambitious, dynamic effort by the U.S. government to increase efficiency, spur innovation, and ensure impact in a fundamental area of global health” and writes, “If successful, ‘Saving Mothers’ will be an important dimension of Clinton’s legacy as Secretary, lifting the lives of women, families, and communities around the world.”

Fleischman briefly discusses the aims of the program and examines “whether these big ideas and much-needed goals for reducing maternal mortality can be translated into building the long-term support necessary to address maternal and child health — the core of health systems in developing countries — while reformulating long-standing and sometimes difficult relationships between multiple U.S. agencies that each have a piece of the U.S. global health agenda, all at a time of shrinking U.S. foreign assistance budgets.” She discusses the project in the context of the U.S. Global Health Initiative (GHI), writing, “Until now, GHI has been more of an approach than a program, which has made it difficult to quantify on the ground.” She concludes, “The ‘Saving Mothers’ project is the first concrete expression of how the Obama Administration’s [GHI] can change the way the U.S. government operates in the global health arena” (6/1).